“Before we split up, Yunyi and the others were on the 15th floor of Block 2, Unit A, in Kangya Compound.”
Chi Wan swallowed with some difficulty, her palms cold.
Outside, the zombies eyed them hungrily.
“Should we plan this out a little more? Going out just like this is basically handing the enemy our heads, isn’t it?”
Belatedly, Chi Zao was getting scared too.
“I’m afraid there’s no time left for planning.”
Bai Long watched the zombies gradually closing in on the pharmacy, giving the iron rod in her hand a little shake.
The zombies that had been lured away earlier had wandered back, and there were now more than twice as many in the emergency lobby as when she’d first come in.
“Not to be that guy, but can she really get us out of here?”
Chen Lei sidled up to Chi Zao and asked under his breath.
Chen Lei and Chi Zao were roommates, but he just couldn’t bring himself to believe a beastman could help them.
“For starters, with this many of us and that many zombies out there, how are we supposed to break through? Charging straight out is a guaranteed death sentence, and we can’t even get the door open right now.”
The more Chen Lei thought about it, the more he doubted whether Bai Long was actually up to the task.
“Don’t end up dragging us all down with you.”
He muttered it a little too loudly.
Hearing this, Bai Long shot him a glance.
Chen Lei’s first reaction was a flash of awkwardness, but then he decided he wasn’t wrong.
“What are you looking at? Am I wrong? All our lives are in your hands. If you try to be a hero, we’ll all be zombie chow!”
“If you can’t do it, just say so…”
Before Chen Lei’s grumbling, doubting voice could even trail off, he watched, wide-eyed, as the short rod in Bai Long’s hand spun and smashed, baseball-bat style, right into the joint of the pharmacy’s main door.
“BOOM!”
The pharmacy door was knocked clean out of the park like a walk-off home run, snapping off and flying straight out to slam heavily against a wall pillar.
In the thunderous crash, more than half the zombies at the doorway were sent flying by the door panel, clearing a path in an instant.
“…say it…” The rest of Chen Lei’s sentence slid dumbly out of his mouth.
He stared at the gaping pharmacy doorway.
The draft blowing through left his head buzzing.
We’re really just charging straight out the front?!
Bai Long didn’t pause for a second, gripping the iron rod as she charged out.
Chi Wan and Chi Zao reacted fastest, falling in behind her in under a second.
The other students rushed after them.
By the time Chen Lei snapped out of it, he was already dead last.
“Oh hell! Wait for me, aaaaah!”
Chen Lei looked up and locked eyes with several zombies, their eyes glowing a faint, eerie green. He shrieked and scrambled to catch up.
Bai Long led the charge, sprinting toward the hover-cars.
“Are we getting in a car?!”
In this race against death, Chi Zao tried to guess Bai Long’s plan.
The iron rod in Bai Long’s hand swung with momentum, swung with force.
She’d somehow swung a pitiful little iron rod into something with the swagger of a war banner waving the troops onward.
She didn’t answer Chi Zao. With one swing she knocked a zombie flying, lunged forward, and jammed the rod hard against the hover-car’s control panel.
Get in? Not even a dog would ride this piece of junk!
Bai Long gritted her teeth.
Chen Lei, who’d started out dead last, was now running for all he was worth, lungs screaming.
Bai Long stopped all at once. He didn’t react in time and, unable to brake, went barreling straight toward the hover-car.
A low, dim light flickered to life around the hover-car. After one circuit, it shot off toward the main entrance like an arrow loosed from a bowstring.
Chen Lei’s eyes went wide, for an instant he thought the hover-car’s launch was about to drag him along with it.
“Aaah!”
The next second, he felt a sudden, raking, gut-wrenching sting across his face, and something warm seemed to trickle out of his nose.
Bai Long had thrown the rod across the path of his charge.
Carried by his own momentum, Chen Lei slammed his face hard into the rod.
Blood instantly spurted from his nose.
But at least he hadn’t gone flying with the zombies when the hover-car plowed through them.
Up ahead, the hover-car had briefly carved out a path.
“Run!”
Bai Long grabbed Chen Lei by the collar and kicked him forward.
Chi Wan and Chi Zao led the other students sprinting out without missing a beat.
Bai Long brought up the rear.
Water orbs condensed between her fingers, and she fired them at the feet of the zombies closing in from three directions behind her.
Clear water splashed open across the tile floor.
The zombies passing over it went down like dominoes, one after another, clattering to the ground.
Tile plus water: the essential recipe for a wipeout.
…
“We’re out! We’re out! We’re actually out!”
Chi Zao yelled in excitement.
Bai Long slapped him on the head. “You think the zombies aren’t chasing fast enough already?!”
The group had no time to celebrate, racing along behind Bai Long toward Kangya Compound.
Chen Lei, clutching the nose he’d finally gotten to stop bleeding, sneakily sidled up behind Bai Long. With one elbow he shoved Chi Zao, who’d been right beside her, way off to the side, then seized the spot on Bai Long’s left for himself.
Chi Zao, taking an inexplicable hit: ?
“What the hell?! Chen Lei, you’ve got no shame at all?”
Chi Zao stared, dumbfounded, at Chen Lei now glued to Bai Long’s side.
Even the terror of the zombies behind them couldn’t top his speechlessness.
“What’s a face worth next to your life?!”
Chen Lei had completely forgotten that mere minutes ago he’d been doubting Bai Long’s abilities, slapping his own face with righteous conviction.
Chi Zao: …
Chi Zao, inwardly: Dammit, what a bootlicker! >:(
“Boss Bai, aren’t you tired? Sleepy? Hungry?”
Chen Lei still had the breath to ask all this while running.
Bai Long looked at him, amused. “You’ve got that much energy?”
“Boss, I’m a long-distance running scholarship student. This little jog isn’t even half my usual training load.”
Chen Lei rubbed his hands together, beaming like a blooming flower.
“I’m a beastman, you know,” Bai Long “kindly” reminded him.
“Boss, you’re you, and other beastmen are other beastmen. How could you possibly compare yourself to them?”
Chen Lei didn’t hesitate for a second.
And honestly, all that stuff about beastmen had been passed down generation to generation, he’d never experienced any of it himself.
Besides, right now it was obviously Bai Long who could save him, not the people running their mouths.
No matter how you sliced it, the fact that Bai Long had saved his life couldn’t be faked.
You needed a life to talk about anything else at all.
Chi Wan caught her breath and quietly asked Chi Zao, who’d just made it back to her side, “Has your roommate always been like this? This… um…”
She was a little embarrassed to say it.
Chi Zao looked utterly speechless. “I’m just finding out too. The kid’s definitely got a future ahead of him.”
Kangya Compound was no more than a single main road away from Ren’ai Hospital.
Dodging the zombies’ pursuit out in the open was much easier than inside the cramped hospital.
Bai Long’s group soon reached the gate of Kangya Compound.
The layout inside Kangya Compound was simple, so finding Block 2, Unit A wasn’t hard.
“There’s no way we’re taking the elevator. Do we have to climb the stairs?”
Chi Zao eyed the fifteen-story height. “…On second thought, let’s not.”
“The moon boat can’t carry this many of us.”
Chi Wan looked at the moon boat moored in the large pool on the ground floor.
There was only one.
A single moon boat could seat five people at most.
But there were six of them right now.
“And if we pick up Yunyi and the others, that’s four more over there…”
Chi Wan fretted.
“Don’t worry about the moon boat for now.”
Bai Long’s gaze swept past a certain spot, and a plan took shape in her mind.
“The question is, do we have any way to confirm whether your classmates are still alive?”
Bai Long looked at Chi Wan and the others.
The words were barely out of her mouth when several furious voices suddenly rang out from overhead.
“Cheng Qian! You old fart, may you die a dog’s death!”
“If I turn into a zombie, the first thing I’ll do is come bite you to death!”
“You old man! Bald and balding any day now! May your line end with you!”
Chi Zao, alarmed: I’m innocent! Don’t drag me into this!
Chi Wan couldn’t help laughing out loud. “Sounds like they’re all still alive.”
Even Bai Long didn’t expect these college students to just start shouting out the window.
Did they figure they were beyond saving and decided to curse out everyone who deserved it before they died?
Listen to those full-throated voices, clearly they had no idea anyone was down below thinking of rescuing them.
Still… from the sound of it, this confirmed her earlier guess.
Not all the students in this class were obedient to Cheng Qian.
“No wonder there are hardly any zombies down here, with all that shouting, they’ve probably all swarmed up there.”
No sooner had Bai Long finished speaking than she watched a few zombies get physically shoved out a window by the students.
Straight into free fall, headfirst into the dirt.
“I’ll go up and get them. The rest of you find somewhere to hide first.”
With that, Bai Long flipped herself up onto the moon boat and, following the method Chi Wan had described, steered it spiraling upward along the current.
Water City’s waterways had a special design.
The current could flow either down or up.
A roller mechanism installed in the bottom layer of the waterway held the moon boat’s base in place, allowing it to travel against the current.
With waterways winding all through Kangya Compound, Bai Long smoothly reached the spot where Xu Yunyi and the others were.
Halfway up, she heard a single startled cry, and then the shouting from the window abruptly stopped.
Bai Long shattered a window with one swing of her rod and got a clear look at the scene inside.
Every heavy object in the room, sofas, cabinets, had been piled up against the door. The door boomed under the zombies’ pounding, but had yet to give way.
Three students were clustered around one girl, faces full of panic.
“You… who are you?!”
One of the boys didn’t recognize Bai Long. Seeing her shatter the glass, he cried out in instinctive alarm.
“Ah! It’s that noodle lady!”
A curly-haired girl had remembered.
Noodle lady?
What kind of ridiculous nickname was that?
Bai Long’s face went flat with exasperation. Her gaze fell on the only girl lying unconscious on the floor.
Looked vaguely familiar…
Oh, it was that girl who’d said she wanted to eat Bai Long’s noodles and rolled her eyes at Cheng Qian.
“Creak, creak!”
The piled-up heavy objects couldn’t bear the strain of the zombie horde’s assault, they were already showing signs of toppling and being breached.
“Get her on the boat, quick.”
Bai Long didn’t waste words, clearing the broken glass from the window frame in a few quick motions.
The three students realized she was here to rescue them. They scrambled in a flurry, but moved fast, helping the fainted girl up and bolting toward Bai Long.
Bai Long took the unconscious girl from their arms first.
So hot!
This girl was running a fever.
The instant her hand touched the girl’s skin, Bai Long realized something was very wrong.
“Yunyi wasn’t bitten! She just suddenly came down with a fever!”
Seeing Bai Long’s expression change, the curly-haired girl immediately explained.
The boys nodded along too. “Yeah, yeah, she really wasn’t bitten! You have to believe us!”
They were terrified Bai Long might toss them back down because of it.
While they were talking, Bai Long had already checked the girl’s exposed skin.
Sure enough, there was no bite wound.
“This is Xu Yunyi?”
Bai Long looked at the girl, delirious with fever.
“She’s probably about to awaken an esper power.”